How Do I Stop Foreclosure Proceedings?

To keep your house and stop foreclosure, at some point you'll have to pay off the mortgage delinquency.

Foreclosure isn't inevitable. Even if your lender has already filed to take your property, you can keep fighting almost until the auction takes place. At worst, you can stretch out the foreclosure for a few weeks or months, during which time you can keep living in your house. At best, you may be able to stop the process completely. To both stop foreclosure and keep your house, you will have to continue making payments on your mortgage.

1

Talk to a foreclosure avoidance counselor. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development maintains a list of counselors on its website who will go over your financial situation and foreclosure laws with you at no cost.

2

Pay off any delinquent payments, plus interest. In many states, that's all it takes, according to the Nolo legal website. In California, you can stop the foreclosure by settling your debt as late as five days before the foreclosure sale. If you can't pay your lender quickly enough, talk to her about a repayment plan or suspending payments for a while, or ask a counselor to speak with your lender for you.

3

Turn to the government for help. The federal Making Home Affordable program offers several solutions for keeping your home. If your mortgage payment is more than 31 percent of your monthly income, for instance, the Home Affordable Modification Program offers financial incentives to lenders to lower the monthly payments. HAMP will accept applications through the end of 2012.

4

Challenge the foreclosure in court. Lenders using a "nonjudicial" foreclosure procedure--the norm in California--don't have to go to court, but you can still file your own lawsuit to fight it. Your defenses might include lender error, a failure to follow legal procedure or outrageously unfair mortgage terms.

5

File for bankruptcy. Bankruptcy can't stop foreclosure permanently, Nolo states, but it can buy you several more months in which to catch up on payments. Because it will wipe out many of your other debts, it may also free up enough money that paying your mortgage becomes easier.

About the Author

A graduate of Oberlin College, Fraser Sherman began writing in 1981. Since then he's researched and written newspaper and magazine stories on city government, court cases, business, real estate and finance, the uses of new technologies and film history. Sherman has worked for more than a decade as a newspaper reporter, and his magazine articles have been published in "Newsweek," "Air & Space," "Backpacker" and "Boys' Life." Sherman is also the author of three film reference books, with a fourth currently under way.